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HANCEVILLE, Ala. – Hanceville’s Neal Watts has always been a huge music fan. He’s turned that love of music into a great retirement pastime at Blue Moon Records inside the Mud Creek Trading Company in downtown Hanceville.
Watts and his wife, Laura, are both originally from Huntsville and went to school together.
“We went to school together and didn’t date or anything. She was too cool for me,” he laughed. “I always had a crush on her in junior high school. I moved to Cullman when I was 16 in 1974. A year later, she moved to Texas and we hadn’t seen each other in 38 years.”
The two reconnected on Facebook in 2012, and several months later they were married.
Watts always loved music and began collecting records at 12 years old.
He said, “I probably kept every record I ever bought until I started buying used ones at Charlemagne Records in Birmingham. In 1977, I bought my first used album there, I don’t have the same one, but it was Neil Young’s “Decade,” a compilation three-record set. Back then a new record was $15-$20; I think I gave $6 or $7 for it.”
Charlemagne Records closed its doors last year.
Said Watts, “It was on after that. I was getting records I didn’t listen to anymore and taking them down there and coming home with three or four records at a time. I started going to record shows in Birmingham, Atlanta, Chattanooga and Huntsville.”
His tastes in music have evolved over the decades and his collection continued to grow. He loves the Beatles and got into country rock and fell in love with the band Little Feat when he had the opportunity to see a show in Birmingham. He’s also a huge fan of Widespread Panic and Gov’t Mule.
Watts had his first record store in Cullman during the late 90s and early 2000s near the old Cullman Feed and Seed. He’s had booths at a few flea markets but mostly packed everything up until the resurgence in the popularity of vinyl records around the time he and Laura were married.
They rented a booth in the basement of Finder’s Keepers where, he said, “The records started selling. People were buying them at what I thought were ridiculously high prices.”
He was also in the jewelry industry, but after opening a new jewelry business, he said he was quickly reminded why he had left the business in the first place.
“It’s too expensive to keep stock, and in the jewelry business you make most of your money in the month of December and the rest of the time you hope you made enough to survive,” he said.
He soon returned to buying, selling and trading records and CDs.
Last year, Watts decided to open a retail location in Hanceville, and he is enjoying it.
“This is my retirement,” he said. “I also worked voter registration at the courthouse so I was able to retire.”
He said he’s happy as long as they are able to cover the overhead, and he finds Hanceville to be the ideal location for Blue Moon.
Watts wouldn’t give away any collector’s secrets for finding great albums, but laughed about yard sale finds, “Most of the time it’s easy listening, Lawrence Welk, bad country, and that’s why they are in the yard sale. Most people when they have them, older people, their kids go through and get all the good stuff out that they wanted.”
He added, “The best records I have ever got were people who were real collectors and sold their whole collection.”
He recently bought a collection of 1,200 albums, complete with a card file listing all the albums, from an old buddy from school.
Mud Creek Trading Company is open Tuesday-Saturday from 10 a.m.- 6 p.m. It is located at 108 Main St. SE, Hanceville, AL 35077.
Find Mud Creek on Facebook at www.facebook.com/MudCreekTradingCompany.
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